


will it be a bang, or a whimper?

by bruised_fruit



Series: headcanon compliant [13]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Stolen Century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 08:46:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19808806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bruised_fruit/pseuds/bruised_fruit
Summary: Their journey will end with their permanent death, the ship’s destruction, the snuffing out of his bond engine. In the meantime, Davenport flies his crew away, year after year, and he doesn’t allow for foolish dreams.





	will it be a bang, or a whimper?

It’ll end eventually. 

The thought weighs heavily, when Davenport allows it to. 

Inevitably, one cycle the Hunger will become large enough that he will no longer be able to navigate away. Or perhaps it will be a careless error on his part, the ship consumed well before their time should’ve been up. On hard days, he imagines his crew will eventually lose hope, centuries down the line, and he will fly them into the Hunger himself. It’s grim, but not unfathomable. There’s only so much they’ve ever been able to do, and only so long that they’ll be able to do it.

What other outcome could there be? There’s no happy ending in sight. No possible solution, and he won’t waste time being stupid enough to pretend they can fight the Hunger. It’s the Hunger. 

Their journey will end with their permanent death, the ship’s destruction, the snuffing out of his bond engine. In the meantime, Davenport flies his crew away, year after year, and he doesn’t allow for foolish dreams. He only allows himself enough to hope that his crew won’t become hardened and cold. They’re his family, and they’re what keeps him going, after all.

He likes them happy. He needs them happy. So he holds it inside, his expectation that their meager existence will end one day. There will be no more planes saved from the Hunger, no more meticulous notes preserving what little could be gleaned from a year, no more tenuous relationships with the inhabitants of the planes, no friendships at all.

He will be desperate for anything, when he is given the opportunity to imagine an escape, a victory. He will wonder what it could even look like. He won’t be happy with the answer, but he’ll take it.

Because if they don’t win, then surely they lose. There are so many ways to die, and so many kinds of failure on a journey like this. There is permanence even with their bond engine, and he felt it while he and his crew were executed by the judges, and he was terrified, unsure if Lucretia was alive or capable of escape. They’re carefuller now. Even if it means a plane is lost, they protect themselves.

Davenport makes the call, always. He decides which of his crew risks their lives, and his tactical skill often determines if the plane lives or dies, and that they get out in time. The weight of his responsibilities weighs heavily on his shoulders, but not as heavily as the existential threat of the Hunger. The reality of the situation, if he lets himself think about it, is horrifying enough that he could barely function. So he tries not to think about it. He pushes down fear, quashes doubt, strangles anything before it can ruin the twisted shadow of his mission that he’s been pursuing for so long. 

Denial. Is that what they meant? He needs it, then. Because otherwise, he’s consumed by terror, and raging at how much he’s lost, the burden he’s been saddled with. He’s useless. 

It’s better to busy himself with his duties and his crew, and pretend the possibility of failure hasn’t passed his mind. Hasn’t nested in the back to haunt him on sleepless nights. 

Maybe he’ll spend the rest of his life in denial. Hoping the bond engine will hold up. Knowing that one day it will be destroyed, or it won’t be enough, but not entertaining that he’d lose his crew for good. He can’t imagine them gone for good, not after over 80 years of the engine resurrecting the crew, not after over 80 years of his family and the ship being the only constants in his life. But it’ll happen one day, won’t it? And who knows how awful it will be. 

Davenport sits at his desk, head in hands. His quarters feel lonelier than usual tonight. A part of him wants to venture into the common area, but it’s late enough that he likely won’t find anyone. He just doesn’t want to be alone right now. He doesn’t want to follow his trains of thought until they exhaust him and he finally passes out. 

He finds himself worrying himself to sleep more often than not. 

He stands from his desk. Might as well have some tea. Might as well try to distract himself from all of this.

The hallway is dim, and it’s a quiet walk to the kitchen, which he finds empty. While he waits for the tea water to boil, Davenport looks through one of Lucretia’s journals from last cycle. She always wants his approval on them, as if there is anyone more expert than her on documentation. Still, it’s always nice to see what she had done, and he’s made a habit of reading through them for her, even if it’s just a formality at this point. 

There’s some existential question to her journal-keeping, too. But she’s decided it’s worth it. And it’s meaningful that each cycle is preserved like this. When she dies, the rest of the crew takes up recording everything she can’t. And when she has the cycle to do her work, she does it exceptionally, driven by a sense of purpose that awes him.

Cycle 80 had been a bad cycle, but they’d had far worse. It’s always hard to contextualize, and any plane they don’t lose is a good cycle, really. But they’d been miserable all year, and had only narrowly saved the plane from the Hunger. He remembered when he’d finally gotten his hands on the Light. The locals had been furious. Unfortunate, but for the entire cycle they’d treated the crew hostilely, and it was only out of a sense of duty that he felt glad to have protected them.

Lucretia hadn’t recorded much about the civilization, not having had the opportunity to document much about them. Instead there are extensive notes on the wildlife, the bizarre animals and plentiful flora--Merle had to have helped with that--and some on the odd weather phenomena. Her meticulous illustrations interspersed throughout are a treat, as usual.

As bad as the year had been, Lucretia’s notes make him nostalgic. Cycle 81 is a desert planet with little interesting going on. There will be journals to look through, to be sure, but 80 was far more exciting, if frustrating. Not that he needs excitement above anything else. An early recovery of the Light is always better. Friendly or at least compliant civilizations are always better.

Davenport sighs, putting down the journal. Yes, he’s glad they saved 80. They’d needed a win. And hopefully they’ll save this plane as well. It’s all they really can do, their only real goal moving forward. Otherwise they’d have a purposeless existence, and the Hunger would consume them even faster. And his crew likes to think of themselves as heroic, trying to do as much good as they can while on this perilous journey. Well, he can get behind that. 

His tea water is ready. He gets up, feeling weary, and pours himself a mug, adding a tea bag from the weathered tin Taako had gotten him back in cycle 63. Time to finish reading through the journal. He hopes he can settle his mind and get some sleep.


End file.
